Books: Death as a Virtue

The Crusaders who stormed Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, slaughtered the
Turkish garrison and then ran amuck, firing mosques and synagogues,
battering down doors, killing, killing, killing. Even as the slaughter
of 40,000 people was still going on, the leaders of the Crusade, the
barons of France, Germany and Sicily, humbly went "barefoot, with sighs
and tears, through the holy places where Jesus Christ had lived in the
flesh," devoutly kissing the "places where his feet had trod." In the
end, wrote Chronicler William of Tyre, "the city offered a spectacle of
such...